


DJ

by rendawnie



Series: Pieces [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Clubbing, Dancing, First Kiss, First Meetings, Flirting, Fluff, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11415300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rendawnie/pseuds/rendawnie
Summary: Ten visits the club where Johnny DJs, reeling from his recent breakup.Soundtrack: "DJ", Amanda Blank





	DJ

It’s between sets, and Johnny’s halfway down a cold bottle of Coke and a massive mountain of chili cheese fries, when he slowly becomes aware of a light, lilting voice attempting desperately to be heard over the bland noise of the filler music in the club.

“Excuse me. Excuse me? EXCUSE ME! DJ MAN!!”

Johnny doesn’t turn around on his barstool. He’s earned these fries, dammit, and he’s not going to let some weirdo take the small joys he gets on a nightly basis away from him. However, it seems that this weirdo, whoever he is, because Johnny still hasn’t looked, is disinclined to slink away quietly and accept what should be his obvious failure.

Even over how loud the music is in here, even through the tinnitus he’s battled for the last five years because he staunchly refuses to wear earplugs at his job, Johnny can hear the weirdo clear his throat. He sighs, contemplating the fry in his hand that was about to join its friends in his stomach, tosses it back onto the plate, and turns around, wiping his hands on a paper napkin from the dispenser on the bar.

He regrets it almost immediately.

If he could have just stayed put, if he could have let this guy be ignored, it would have been better, Johnny thinks. But he can never just _not_ , and so here he is, and the weirdo is _cute_ and Johnny is dying slowly. Internally. It’s definitely mostly internal. Hopefully.

The weirdo stands a few feet back, hip cocked to the side and one hand perched on it, and right away Johnny is aware of several things.

One, the weirdo is cute. As previously discussed.

Two, the weirdo is sad. Johnny can see the faded tracks of tears on his cheeks, even though he’s trying like hell to glare and appear something close to menacing. It’s not working, and Johnny will not be telling him so.

Three, the weirdo is drunk. It’s in the way he’s swaying the smallest bit from side to side, as if he’s not quite in control of his own limbs, and now that Johnny recognizes the weirdo, he knows that’s not true.

The weirdo is here every Friday and Saturday. He dances. He dances _well._  He’s the kind of dancer that everyone stops what they’re doing to watch, the kind of dancer no one can look away from until the song is over and he flashes a shy, pearly white smile to the people around him and the spell is broken.

Four, the weirdo has just been dumped. Johnny knows this because for months, every Friday and Saturday night, he was here with another guy, a doofy-looking, hulking one that Johnny was keenly aware was nowhere near good enough for him and the glow he blessed the club with on a weekly basis. Tonight, the guy’s nowhere to be found, and the weirdo looks sad, and so Johnny comes to the most logical conclusion.

He tries not to think too hard about how “doofy-looking” and “hulking” could both be applied to him, on a variety of occasions and by any number of observant individuals.

Johnny knows for sure that he’s just been dumped, because the next thing out of the weirdo’s mouth is: “I just got dumped and I came here to forget about, like, my life and my whatever, so I need you to get off this barstool and put the fries down and play some better music so I can do that.”

Johnny doesn’t answer. He stares, probably. The weirdo hesitates.

“Please.”

Johnny sighs without really meaning to. “Sit down,” he says finally, patting the stool next to him. The invitation earns him a confused stare, but the weirdo eventually complies.

_Okay, he’s not a weirdo. Shut up, defense mechanisms._

He slumps onto the stool and puts his head in his hands, groaning loud enough to make the bar underneath Johnny’s hands vibrate with the sound, instead of on the pounding beats of the music surrounding them. Assaulting them with its awfulness, really. Maybe the guy’s right, and Johnny should get back up there and save the patrons from this shitshow. But suddenly, other things seem imminently more important.

Johnny waves a hand at the bartender and is gifted with a glass of ice water for his trouble. He pushes it towards the guy, making sure it brushes against his arm so he knows it’s there even from inside his elbows.

The guy jerks his head up quickly, eyes darting from Johnny to the bartender to the glass in front of him, and Johnny can see the moment where he deflates a little, where he gives up and takes a long sip.

Johnny watches him silently for a moment. He’s pretty, kind of, in sort of an elfy way. He smiles even when he shouldn’t, when Johnny knows he probably doesn’t want to. He’s that kind of person. Every smile makes his nose crinkle. It sucks. It really does suck, and Johnny is really, _really_ in trouble.

He watches until he’s sure he’s starting to make the guy uncomfortable, and then between songs, Johnny leans over and asks, “What’s your name?”

The guy takes another sip of water, eyes falling shut in relief. “Ten.”

Johnny snorts. “What happened to One through Nine?”

Ten rolls his eyes. “Original. It’s a nickname.”

“For what?”

“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce it.”

He’s probably right, so Johnny lets it go.

Neither of them say anything else for a moment, and Johnny is afraid if they wait too long the music will start again, so he blurts out the next thing he thinks of.

“So, that idiot dumped you.” It’s not a question, and Johnny’s not really sure if it should be.

Ten looks surprised. “You’ve seen us?”

Johnny nearly laughs. “Dude, you come here every week and blow everyone else out of the water when you dance. Of course I’ve seen you.”

Ten is blushing. It’s a good look.

Johnny licks his lips, wondering where the limits are, where he can go and how far Ten will go with him.

“What was his name?”

Ten frowns. “Chad.”

The guffaw that leaves Johnny’s throat and skids out of his mouth is completely involuntary.

“Chad. Ten and _Chad._ ”

The frown deepens. “Yeah, okay. I get it. I know he was kind of a loser, but he was _my_ loser for a long time. Y’know?”

He looks lost, now. A lost boy sitting in a dark club at the bar with a strange DJ, and Johnny doesn’t know what he can do to make anything better, until the music starts again and he remembers himself.

Johnny lifts himself off his stool and bends down to speak, his face an inch or two from Ten’s, and Ten is staring up at him with wide, slightly inebriated eyes and parted lips and Johnny should really be leaving, right now, immediately, but instead, he smiles and says, “Any requests?”

Ten smiles too. He’s blushing again. “Loud and hard and fast,” he says, and Johnny decides to disregard most of the ways he could take that comment and just go with face value. Context. Context is very important, he finds. He nods and leaves, finally, before he can truly tank the whole situation, whatever it is, before it’s even begun.

Once he’s back in the DJ booth, Johnny feels better. He’s home. Up here, he’s less embarrassing, less of a human disaster. He’s cool, or he can pretend to be. If he can convince himself, he can convince anyone.

He wonders if he’s convinced Ten.

An hour passes. An hour of loud, hard and fast, and Johnny gets lost watching Ten move through the shadows, watching him twirl around the lights and wrap his body around every single song. It’s hypnotic, and Johnny hasn’t had a drop to drink yet tonight, but he wonders if maybe he’s still a little drunk, somehow. Maybe secondhand drunk, from leaning in so close to Ten.

Ten’s not drinking anymore, Johnny notices. He’s chugging water between songs instead, and every so often he turns his face up to the DJ booth and gives Johnny a thumbs up and a wink, and Johnny is so, so gone and in even more trouble than he ever thought possible, and honestly? He couldn’t care less.

He’s lost in thought for long enough to miss a cue, and loud and hard and fast fades into slow, soft and boring before Johnny can react, but Ten does it for him, yelling from the middle of the dance floor.

“DJ. WHAT HAPPENED TO LOUD, HARD AND FAST??”

Johnny shakes his head, laughing, coming back to reality, or something close to it. None of this feels real, not anymore, not tonight. Everything about Ten is the best kind of fantasy, the kind that could actually be attainable, touchable. Have-able. All kinds of -ables. So Johnny laughs, and changes the song for Ten, and Ten keeps dancing for him.

Johnny knows this, because a second later his phone buzzes with a text. It’s from an unfamiliar number.

 

_This one’s for you._

 

Johnny’s brow furrows, and he scans the crowd. Ten is waving his phone in the air, the bright glow framing him in a different kind of spotlight, and Johnny looks at his phone again.

 

_Everyone here has your number. I just asked the first person I saw, Johnny the DJ._

 

So much for convincing himself or anyone that he’s cool. Johnny resigns himself to his nerdy fate, blushing and smiling up above the crowd, filled with nervous surprise at where this night is taking him. Taking them.

When Johnny walks Ten home at the end of the night, and they’re standing on the doorstep of Ten’s building, the air around them thick with heat and expectation, it’s Ten who’s brave enough to tip forward on his toes and kiss Johnny, his small hands resting on Johnny’s waist cautiously, and then the kiss is over before Johnny can remember any of his usual tricks, the ones he hasn’t gotten the chance to use in a long time, but it doesn’t matter anymore, because maybe he’ll have more chances, now.

Ten gives him a little smile and goes inside without saying a word, but suddenly Johnny has too many words, so many that they might spill out onto the street if he doesn’t say some of them, and so he stops at the corner of Ten’s street and pulls out his phone and dials his number.

Ten answers on the first ring, and Johnny takes him along for the walk home.

They walk each other home every night after that, and sometimes night turns to morning and Ten is still there, and Johnny wonders how the hell he became the new Chad, but then Ten kisses his nose and tells him he’s not the new Chad, he’s the first and only Johnny.

Johnny never thought he’d find anything better than music. And he didn’t. Ten found him.


End file.
